If a parent reference variable is holding the reference of the child class and we have the “value” variable in both the parent and child class, it will refer to the parent class “value” variable, whether it is holding child class object reference. The reference holding the child class object reference will not be able to access the members (functions or variables) of the child class. It is because compiler uses special run-time polymorphism mechanism only for methods.

It is possible to access child data members using parent pointer with typecasting. Please see last example of this for complete code.

This article is contributed by Twinkle Tyagi .If you like GeeksforGeeks and would like to contribute, you can also write an article using contribute.geeksforgeeks.org or mail your article to contribute@geeksforgeeks.org. See your article appearing on the GeeksforGeeks main page and help other Geeks.

Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about the topic discussed above.